Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks very much, Acting Deputy President. We'll get back to the matter at hand, which was, sadly, the very self-interested appointments made to the COVID commission—a bunch of big business folk who are all steeped in the gas industry. Of course, we all know that gas is a dirty fossil fuel that will simply delay the transmission to genuinely clean, cheap renewable energy, which will create more jobs and help us to address the climate crisis. But this government thinks, 'Actually, no, they don't even need to disclose their conflicts of interest.' They are trusted to manage those conflicts.

We saw that of the six COVID commissioners—essentially the umbrella body under which those task force members sit—five don't want to put in the public domain what their personal financial interests are. So, once again, there is a complete lack of transparency by this government. The government's not going to require those conflicts of interest to be disclosed. It's certainly not going to do anything to manage them. It trusts those people to manage those conflicts. Well, we don't. The Australian public doesn't. This is exactly why your government has no credibility on integrity or transparency matters. I've listed the six pre-election slush funds that have been rorted to help this government retain government, I've listed many of the 'contracts for mates' scandals that have been exposed, and we now see the favours for donors with the appointments of gas industry luminaries to an advisory body that then recommends investment in gas in a climate crisis when farmers are desperate to have some security of water supply and when the Great Artesian Basin is at stake.

Today we're debating a bill for transparency, which the Greens welcome and support, but what we really need to be doing is bringing forward a vote on the Greens bill for a federal corruption watchdog, which passed this Senate. Thank you to all of those folk in here that supported that bill—not the government, of course. But we need the House to actually vote on that, because it is long past time that this level of government had a corruption watchdog. It's going to be very busy. There's an awful lot for it to look at, and notions that somehow it's not necessary are just ridiculous. This government's own version is so weak that it's been roundly criticised by anyone who knows anything about integrity or this subject matter. It's a fig leaf of a body, and it's been delayed yet again after being described as 'imminent' more than a year ago. So we welcome the moves for increased transparency, but let's do the job properly and finally have this government held to account for the litany of rorts, contracts to mates and appointments of donors to advisory positions on policy for donations which is bringing this government and this institution into disrepute.